One player in our group just had to make a new character, his previous Paladin having been pulverized into a fine mist by an angry giant.
He made an Infernal bloodline halfling sorcerer specializing in charm spells.
Thing is, he doe'snt always think things trough, or tends to read the rules to quickly or missing important points. (For instance, he took the feat "Prefered Spell" for his Sorcerer (he tought "Cast Spontaneously" meant cast as an immediate action... sigh) or said he wanted to cast Dominate Person on a raging barbarian about to charge him. Also, he pops spells like an addict would pop pills while in the middle of a pretty dangerous dungeon and we're on a timer.
Anyways, the latest problem that showed up seemed to be the worst one, as it pretty much jeopardizes his whole build.
You see, the character has a very average intelligence score of 10, and only speaks common. Did'nt take the Tongues spell or invest in languages, mainly because he lacks skill points, and because he did'nt want his character to look like he was tailored for the campaing (we seem to be having some translation problems with old ruins and all that).
So, the first encounter we're we faced his little language problem went pretty much like this:
Were invisible trying to push trough the place as fast as possible. We come upon a narrow passage blocked by a couple of trolls, and they start talking about how they smell us (DM's way of saying to us that we won't be abble to sneak past this encounter). Halfling backs away a bit, hides and then casts charm monster on each troll, both failing their saving throws. Now he starts talking to them.
[Halfling](In common): Hey there my friends. Let us pass. I bring prisoners for the [Boss' name redacted]. They are invisible so the other brutes here won't eat them right away.
[Trolls] (In giant): Hey look, cute little thingy here. It looks like it's trying to speak to us! It's so cuuuuute!
[DM]: So, how are you going to get them to do what you want?
[Halfling's player]: You mean they don't speak common?
[DM]: Nope. And thanks for reminding me by the way.
[Me]: Wait a minute. You're telling me you made a beguiler, did'nt invest in linguistics AND did'nt take the "Tongues" spell?
[Halfling's player]: Uh.. yeah, did'nt think about that part...
[Us]: /facepalm
In any case, my character tried to pull the halfling away and whisper him his message translated in giant to repeat. The trolls then instructed him to bring the prisoners to the cages, which we had just emptied. That's pretty much when I drew my sword.
Now that I'm done ranting, any suggestions on how to fix his little problem? Other than me killing him and having him create a Wizard I mean. Oh, and why we're at it, how do you guys handle the rules for learning new languages in game, both normal ones and obscure dead languages?
Personally (and I'm assuming he's a newish player and deserving of a little leeway) I'd just allow him to retcon a few ranks of linguistics and call it a day.
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I'm a pretty lenient DM, so outside of PFS, if a player finds that they made they character "wrong", I usually allow them to take a few minutes before a game session to fix their character. I only allow this once per campaign, or if its a really long campaign, once per chapter.
But that all really depends on the DM, most will want you to suck up the deficiency and find ways around it. Talk to the DM and the player and see if they can come to an arrangement.
Personally (and I'm assuming he's a newish player and deserving of a little leeway) I'd just allow him to retcon a few ranks of linguistics and call it a day.
This. I would just let him switch out a spell or a few ranks. No need to punish a player undeservedly for inexperience with a new character type.
Personally (and I'm assuming he's a newish player and deserving of a little leeway) I'd just allow him to retcon a few ranks of linguistics and call it a day.
The worst is, he's not new to gaming in general AT ALL. As for PF, I don't know his exact history, but I assume he started at the same time we all did, which is a bit under two years ago, when we started the campaing. We're not native english speakers tough, so that might be part of the problem.
And if he makes it to the next level to buy some ranks in linguistics, he can always learn the new languages from the evil voices in his head. Kinda surprising how well educated those dark whispers are, you can learn so much if you just listen to what they have to say...
I also agree to cutting the guy some slack. Particularly with replacement characters. If he was played from 1st level, the flaw would have been obvious and corrected. Starting above that, you miss out on the checks and balances of organic character growth.
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Why even make a thread about this?* This has happened loads of times in the groups I've played. RotRL in particular is very language heavy and it could just be that everyone else was pretty aware of the fact, while the paladin player just concentrated on smashing stuff to a pulp. Pally players are like that.
I agree with Chugga and Ravingdork(woah). Some reshuffling and soon it'll beceome one of those tableside funnies, such as when we made a flying colossal tyrannosaurus.
*Disclaimer: Sorry if that seems harsh. I mean it more in the vein of "Should have made a thread about silly player mistakes rather than an advice asking one"
I usually allow a retcon on a character if it's brand new and hasn't leveled. Once he levels up, he's stuck.
As to learning new languages, I ask the player to let me know what he's trying to learn. Then he has to tell me how he's doing it. For example, if the character wants to learn Drow, but there are no drow currently around? Well, if he can find a book written in drow, then he can try to learn the written portion. If he can speak elven, then he has a decent chance of understanding spoken drow in the future. If not, he'll need to listen to some drow to match sounds to letters (kind of like someone who learns to read ancient Egyptian runes eventually begins to learn the language associated with it).
Either way, he can't pick up a language unless he has a good way of learning it.
Now, what I do do in my own games is make Common the trade speech. Every continent has it's own version. It's similar enough that with a few weeks of effort (and no skill point expenditure), you can pick up on the local version of it. I also make it easier to pick up languages that are related (IE: If you already speak elven, you can pick up drow a lot faster in game).
Personally (and I'm assuming he's a newish player and deserving of a little leeway) I'd just allow him to retcon a few ranks of linguistics and call it a day.The worst is, he's not new to gaming in general AT ALL. As for PF, I don't know his exact history, but I assume he started at the same time we all did, which is a bit under two years ago, when we started the campaing. We're not native english speakers tough, so that might be part of the problem.
Being a long time roleplaying veteran doesn't mean squat if he's starting a character type he's never played before.
I've seen 10-year RPG vets play nothing but fighter-types to great effect, only to finally try out a spellcaster in year 11 only to fck everything up for themselves due to inexperience.
Why even make a thread about this?* This has happened loads of times in the groups I've played. RotRL in particular is very language heavy and it could just be that everyone else was pretty aware of the fact, while the paladin player just concentrated on smashing stuff to a pulp. Pally players are like that.
I agree with Chugga and Ravingdork(woah). Some reshuffling and soon it'll beceome one of those tableside funnies, such as when we made a flying colossal tyrannosaurus.
*Disclaimer: Sorry if that seems harsh. I mean it more in the vein of "Should have made a thread about silly player mistakes rather than an advice asking one"
Maybe I should've posted that in general or some other forum, but there are some legitimate questions. And thanks to you guys for the pointers. Our DM is pretty harsh sometimes, but tries to be fair and considering the situation he just might let the swap fly.
And thanks for the "voices in the head" idea, pretty good fluff way to explain how he would've learned a few new languages, and convince our DM to let him learn new ones quickly, since he hates the skill mechanic for learning a new language, being more of the "language are complicated and long to learn, study one for a few months and then we'll talk" school.
'Study one for a few months', and it'll be too late, because the campaign will be over and the PCs will be level 15+...
That depends on the game. From the sounds of it though, this AP requires you to either know the languages or not, and you're hosed if you don't.
One solution that hasn't been given is a headband of +2 Int (Linguistics). N ranks worth of languages (pre-determined).
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How do you guys, as GMs, handle learning languages anyway? I ask because our GM seems not to worry overmuch about my Serpent's Skull character picking language left and right. Middle of the jungle is no obstacle on putting a point into Abyssal. Previously, while we were in civilization*, it was easy to roleplay some language learning sessions. Finding books written in Aklo and extrapolating some proficiency in that from finding common stems and even cognates between the tongue twister and Thassilonian. Polyglot was easy to pick up since we are accompanied by a jungle guide and in constant contact with the language.
Now though, I'm of a mind to limit my language picks by virtue of simulationism. There's just no way I could pick, say, Undercommon up, even though the Player's Guide suggested that and mechanically speaking it is as simple as assigning a point in Acrobatics. How would you rule in this situation? Go for realism and enforce some type of learning period? Just cringe at the lack of verisimillitude?
*Not a lost civilization, I mean
The group I play in generally handwaves it. I suppose if I were trying to justify how we do it I'd say that a point represented the final step to fluency, and we don't roleplay the learning of the language in the same way we don't roleplay sitting down to eat every day, or studying spells in the morning. If you're playing the egghead type who is likely to be learning a lot of languages, you're probably the type to carry several books with you, and it's safe to assume that some of those are going to be in different languages, so you could say you're learning from them.
The exception of course is restricted languages. If my Wizard were to set out to learn Druidic there would have to be some fairly hefty roleplaying for him to succeed at that.
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When I played a wizard, I just assumed since he started out with 8 language , That it was extremal easy to learn other language , more so related language , on top of that having books with translations to other language can help, learning from your party, exc.
Also Summoning the monster and talking to him for 1 min at a time could be fun...
There are people in the real world that know 20+ language , and they say to just start speaking what you know first, then grow from there.
You never really master a language , spending 1 day in Mexico could teach you enough words to get by to be able to live there just by practicing what you know.